Monrovia parents on alert for suspicious man

Police are putting extra patrols in Morgan County neighborhoods after teenagers report a suspicious man approaching them while they waited for their school bus.

Parents in a Monrovia neighborhood are on the lookout for a man in a gray pick-up truck, who they say has been driving up and down roads in the early morning hours as kids get on school buses. They say the man has approached two teenagers in the past two weeks in the Briarwood Lake subdivision.

One of those teenagers, a 15-year-old boy, told police the man asked him if he wanted a ride.

The other incident came just a week later. That's when a 15-year-old girl says she saw the same man, described as being in his mid 30s, dressed in black, standing on the street near her home. He took off into the woods when he saw her notice him.

Both incidents have caused fear in the school district and prompted parents to put warnings on a Facebook page, telling kids and adults to be on guard.

Police are saying they're doing what they can to look out for the man. They've put officers in the area when kids get on the school bus in the morning and at night when they get off of them.

That's done little, though, to calm fears of parents who didn't want to speak on camera.

They don't know who the man is, but they're afraid of what he wants and they're worried that finding out might mean a child becomes a victim of a crime they don't want to think about.